


antenora

by lionsenpai



Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Gen, Jihl is alive fic, jihl included, not very many people are happy about jihl being alive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1941174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsenpai/pseuds/lionsenpai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jihl’s hands haven’t stopped shaking since she came back. </p><p>Previously et iterum iterumque.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Imrryr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imrryr/gifts).



Jihl slides her palm across the chrome walls, touching corners and feeling beneath the nightstand, the bed. She looks for springs, wires, anything with an edge. Somewhere in the back of her head, she thinks how futile it is; she won’t kill a l’cie with a spring, probably couldn’t even kill a l’cie with a knife, a sword, _her baton_. Still, she dutifully inspects the room, turning over every inch of the ship’s cabin until she’s left with nothing but the vase of flowers that had been sitting by the bedside when she awoke.

She empties it of its contents and holds it like a club, her grip unsteady. Jihl’s hands haven’t stopped shaking since she came back.

Death, she thinks, should have her rooted to the spot, weighted to the point of sinking by the knowledge she’d been lifeless upon the floor of the _Palamecia_ only a handful of hours ago. Instead, she can’t keep still.

She needs to get in contact with Yaag, needs to put out the alert to what remains of her forces: _the Primach has betrayed us._

Jihl gives the vase a swing, and winces against the way the movement sends sparks of pain across her back. The shaking spreads up her arms and to her shoulder, but no matter how much she closes her eyes and forces herself to breathe slowly, in her nose and out her mouth, she can’t stop the trembling any more than she can stop the visions of the Primarch, wicked and monstrous. He’d stepped over her body to engage the l’cie. He hadn’t even _looked._

If she hadn’t died, she may have even cried for herself, lying there, the skin melting off her back because of the very man she’d been prepared to give her life to protect.

 _Not man,_ she reminds herself, bringing the vase back to her side. _How could you not know? He was never human._

From beyond the tiny cabin she’s been relegated, she hears click of boots on metal. _One person, deliberate steps. Probably the GC soldier._ The thoughts are unbidden, but Jihl has been doing this a long time, and even death cannot shake the habit from her. She glances around the room a final time, but there is nothing for her to use against the l’cie save the vase in her hands.

At the last moment she decides against an ambush and sets the vase back on its chrome stand just as the door opens and Lightning Farron steps into the room, a splash of color where there had only been white and chrome before.

She raises her brow when she sees Jihl set it down, the flowers lying next to it on the nightstand, but lingers in the doorway only long enough for Jihl to pull her hands back to her sides in hopes Lightning won’t see the way they are still shaking.

 _She’s armed,_ Jihl thinks, noticing the hilt of her gunblade protruding from the holster hanging at her thighs.

“Colonel Nabaat,” Lightning says in a measured tone. “I would have thought you’d be asleep still.”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m not in the mood for formalities,” Jihl returns, trying for a smile and managing only a grimace. The Primarch had always told her she let her circumstances affect her too much. She is the head of PSICOM, and yet here she is, her pulse in her ears, her throat dry. “I’ve just died recently, you see.”

Lightning doesn’t give her a response, merely crosses her arms and presses her lips. It’s an odd expression she’s wearing, one that Jihl can’t pin down. Whatever’s going through that head of hers, Jihl isn’t privy to it, and that just makes her examine her closer.

Jihl finds herself looking for her brand, scanning what she can see of her skin to find the thing which marks her as l’cie. The most dangerous thing about her kind, Jihl remembers her instructors at the academy saying over and over again, is that they are often mistaken for regular humans until it’s too late. Dysley was like that, though now when she remembers him, all she sees is jagged teeth and long, bestial claws.

“There are some things I want to ask you, Colonel,” Lightning says finally. “But I think you should see where we’ve landed first.”

She nods her head toward the door, but Jihl doesn’t move.

“You ought to have left me on the _Palamecia_. I won’t tell you anything about PSICOM,” she says, trying to imbue her words with the confidence she doesn’t feel. She’s turned it over dozens of times since she’s woken. It’s the only logical reason they would have taken her with them, but she can’t afford to bend when Cocoon itself is their aim.

“PSICOM isn’t what we’re after,” Lightning says, uncrossing her arms and heading toward the door. It slides open with a click, and she stands there, waiting for Jihl to follow. “You can walk, can’t you?”

She’d expected threats, torture, maybe even a second death. She’d seen the destruction the l’cie were capable of in the aftermath of the Purge, the massacre at Palumpolum, and her own loses aboard the _Palamecia._ Still, the sting of the accusation makes short work of Jihl’s surprise. She bristles and presses her lips to a line. She doesn’t deign to respond to Lightning, only takes careful steps out of the cabin, trying not to seem too cautious nor walk too quickly.

Lightning follows her, slipping out of the door silent as a cat and taking the lead once more. There’s something in the line of her jaw and the hardness of her eyes that reminds Jihl of Yaag Rosch. No, she realizes. That’s exhaustion in her eyes, the shadows of her face no more than dark circles from sleepless nights. She’s on her last leg, but she still marches with shoulders squared, her hands in fists.

“I guess you didn’t know anything about Dysley’s real identity?” she asks over her shoulder as they walk the halls of the ship.

Jihl sets her jaw and shakes her head. Lightning just huffs.

She shows her the rest of the way in silence, and Jihl tries to distract herself from the thoughts of Dysley with how easy it would be to quicken her pace just a little and snatch the gunblade from Lightning’s holster. She clenches her shaking fists and wonders how many seconds she’d last against her. Maybe she wouldn’t need to last against her at all. All she’d need is to escape her long enough to get a message to Rosch.

In the end, the phantom pain of her last encounter with magic stays her hand.

Lightning takes her to the cockpit of the ship, and though she remembers bits and pieces of being brought back to life upon this very floor, she doesn’t quite remember it being so empty.

“Where are the rest of your entourage?” Jihl asks, examining the circular room for something of use. It’s empty, though, save for the tech and the pilot’s seat.

“Come and see,” Lightning says, settling against the control panels and gazing out the windows.

Jihl hesitates and then follows her to see. Beyond the glass, there is dank metal, beams coated with mold and rust that formed tunnels which lead only to darkness. It’s an ancient thing, using only the basest metals in its construction, and though Jihl has visited all of Cocoon, she’s never seen architecture like this. Below, the l’cie linger before the mouth of the tunnel.

She recognizes the girl by her hair and Sazh by his old gunner’s coat. The rest of them she’s only seen in pictures and videos, but she counts them all there. They shift from foot to foot, and even from here, she can see they’re barely addressing one another.

“Where is this?” Jihl demands, turning to Lightning so quickly she has to grit her teeth against the sudden pain shooting up her back.

“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.”

When Jihl doesn’t respond, Lightning takes an exasperated breath and says, “We think it’s an Ark, a weapon created to train l’cie so they can complete their Focus. Dysley sent us here, and the gate couldn’t have taken us far from Eden. I thought you would have been able to give us a way out.”

Jihl studies her for a moment. Her clothes are tatters, blood stained and singed, and her trigger finger looks like its itching for the hilt of her gunblade. Her nails are picked down to the beds, and when she looks out upon the other l’cie, her mouth twists into a deep set frown. Jihl does recognize this look. In her work with Cocoon l’cie, she’s seen it often enough. It’s the look of someone who’s running out of time, the look of someone who’s world is slipping between their fingers like water.

She remembers vaguely, through the fog of pain and the encroaching darkness, the look on that face when she’d stopped and looked down at Jihl, bleeding out slowly. She’d looked divine—like an angel.

“What did you see?” Jihl asks, the words the same she asks every l’cie. Her hands tremble. Her chest is tight. “What is your Focus?”

Lightning turns to look at her full on. “Destroy Cocoon. That’s our Focus.”

Jihl sets her teeth. She goes rigid, pulse pounding. She readies herself to grab for Lightning’s gunblade, promising herself that all she needs is one good shot, one good hit. She can end it before Lightning even knows what’s happened, but before she can, Lightning speaks again.

“But we won’t. Cocoon is our home, and we’ve been entrusted with its protection,” she says.

“You can’t,” Jihl says, eyeing her weapon. “A Focus is absolute. You’re enemies of Cocoon.

“Dysley—Barthandalus is the real enemy. We know that now. And we’ll find a way to save Cocoon,” Lightning says, turning back to look out at the other l’cie. “Somehow.”

Jihl turns and looks too. Her back aches, and she stands still enough so that she can only just feel it. _Dysley sent them here_ , she thinks. _Dysley wants them to do it._

 _Desperate times demand flexibility, Jihl_.

She nearly laughs at how his words come to her now. He’d always said she was too rigid. Perhaps he’d been right after all. She forces the tension from her shoulders, fights the pull of her gaze to Lightning’s weapon, and pushes a lock of golden hair behind her ear. She smooths her skirt and turns away from the windows, even finds the ability to scoff.

“You need more than ‘somehow’ to do it,” Jihl says, her voice a hard line. She is commander of PSICOM. She has been forged for this. “I’ll make you regret bringing me back if you have a change of heart.”

Lightning’s frown does not fade. “I’m counting on it,” she says.

 


	2. the ark

There is comfort in the cool grip of her baton, ornate steel still gleaming even in the dim light of the ark. Lightning presents it to her with two hands, holding it out like she knows the weight of it, her eyes tracking Jihl’s every move. Jihl takes it from her with as much poise as she can muster, and memories of her graduation ceremony from the officer academy rise unbidden. She’d taken the tool of the officer from the previous commander of PSICOM when she’d been accepted in the corps. Now, Jihl takes it from a Pulse l’Cie, who tells her solemnly: “We have the same mission.”

Jihl doesn’t need former Commander Gayle Winne or his words of encouragement. She grasps her baton by the hilt, her back like fire where the silk of her shirt brushed against it, and meets Lightning’s gaze. “Barthandelus. Only Barthandelus.”

Together, they make a final, quick sweep of the ship before joining the other l’Cie. There are packaged rations in a supply closet, as well as ammo and half a dozen potions. Lightning leaves the potions for Jihl and some of the rations too, but takes the ammo for herself, saying, “Your mana drives don’t require ammo.”

“They operate and replenish within Cocoon’s atmosphere,” Jihl says, uncorking a potion and taking a swallow. It’s sweet and numbs her throat all the way down, but she exhales cool relief, glancing down at her drives. They hum softly against her skin. “We’re still on Cocoon, and I’m more than prepared, I _assure_ you.”

Lightning accepts that, and they check the remainder of the ship, finding a few more supply rooms with too little and two more cabins, all identical to Jihl’s. It’s all the same, right down to the vase of artificial flowers on the nightstand. In the end, they come back around to the cockpit, and though Jihl itches to get moving, to find her way back to her troops and Barthandelus, she pauses and says, “The commboard on this ship might still be operational. If I can contact my men, I may be able to arrange our return.”

Ready at last, Jihl leads the way as they exit the ship, even if her steps are short and stiff. She has to check her own haste, contenting herself with visions of unseating Barthandelus herself. His would be a long and painful death, an execution by fire, and she would deny him the mercy of a quick demise no matter how he begged. It helps to distract her from the potion-dulled pain he left her with in any case.

“Lightning,” the boy l’Cie calls when he sees them.

The others watch warily, never blinking as Jihl approaches—all save the giant of a man who won’t raise his eyes from the floor.

“Is she… Working with us now?” the boy continues, glancing around to the others in the group.

Up close, Jihl sees he’s all uncertain looks and clenched fists, the lines of his face soft. He’s younger than she first thought, but he’d been sweating magic and bringing death with nothing more than a flick of his boomerang when she’d first seen him on Palumpolum’s video feeds. He rubs at the sides of his pants, never quite catching Jihl’s gaze.

 _Fidgets,_ Jihl thinks, smiling. _Nervous, l’Cie?_

“Colonel Nabaat has agreed to help us. As long as we keep fighting for Cocoon, that won’t change. When we return to Eden, she should be able to help us reach Barthandelus without any more senseless deaths. Until then—Sazh, here. There was ammunition onboard, and rations too. Barthandelus wanted us to be well supplied, it looks like.”

The woman l’Cie, tall, dark, and sleek, looks at her and spits, her arms a fortress across her chest. “I don’t like this,” she snaps, intent on Jihl where the boy had shied away. “She tried to _kill_ Vanille.”

Mr. Katzroy, his face drawn and stern, looks up from tucking away the ammo Lightning gave him and adds his voice to the others. “She isn’t someone you can trust, Lightning. I know better than anyone.”

Jihl speaks up. “It isn’t a matter of _trust_ , Mr. Katzroy.” She doesn’t expect what she doesn’t give, and none of these l’Cie will ever have her trust. “It’s understanding opportunities.”

“She’s already helped us,” Lightning adds. “Colonel Nabaat’s mana drives react to Cocoon’s atmosphere, and we’re still on Cocoon. Ark or not, we’re still in this. Right, Snow?”

Briefly, all the attention falls to the giant in the background. He glances up for but a second, but it’s all Jihl needs to see the resignation written clearly across his face. He is a broken l’Cie, she knows, scanning him to find his brand. _He doesn’t have long,_ she thinks, catching sight of the red and black on his thick forearm.

She watches him, only half hearing the others continue on. He exhales and looks away as the woman says she’s dangerous, even more so when she can sling spells from afar, and they ought not to allow her her drives at least. Mr. Katzroy agrees, and the girl as well, but the man named Snow doesn’t seem to care either way. She almost thinks the same of the boy with the snow white hair until he speaks up and says, “Well… I don’t think we couldn’t beat her if she tried. Six l’Cie against her? She’d need to be a lot stronger to really pose a threat when you think about it.”

They all look at her, and Jihl has to wonder if her face gives so much away. She grits her teeth and tries to curb her snarl.

“Hope’s right,” Lightning cuts in before Jihl can speak. “She’s no match for us. Right now, time is the real issue. We need to get moving.”

Lightning touches the boy’s shoulder as she passes, and he turns and follows her into the mouth of the tunnel. Sazh turns away looking something between sick and disgusted but follows all the same, and though the woman l’Cie lingers to glare and scowl, she finally falls in as well when the red haired girl does. The only one who remains is Snow, who won’t meet her eyes.

Jihl begins to walk as well, her hands itching to show them just how much of a threat she is, but he speaks as she passes.

“You work with l’Cie,” he says, not even looking at her.

“Cocoon l’Cie,” she snaps, limping past him. 

“Did anyone ever beat their Focus?” he asks.

“No,” she says, her voice a flat line of finality.

When Jihl takes her place in their formation, she finds there’s little need of her on the front lines. For a time, they fight with only five, three in the front and two in the back, but even then nothing can oppose them. They are mature l’Cie, full to the brim with magic no human should wield, and Jihl watches them tear through the monsters of the Ark without hesitation.

They descend into the Ark after they notice the numbers on the great shaft stretch farther from zero the higher they go. It’s exhausting work, finding alternate paths when the bridges have given way to rust and decay, and the l’Cie move at a merciless pace, but Jihl keeps up—barely. She won’t let them see her struggle no matter how little suited heels are to travel, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t anguish in silence, wincing and clenching her fists every time a step jars her back, every time a monster’s attack shakes the very ground beneath her. The potion is still taking the edge off her pain, but it won’t matter how many she drinks; they cannot help her match the l’Cie’s swiftness.

Besides, she doesn’t want to risk her clarity leaving her by drinking too many potions. She needs her mind now if she hopes to survive this.

Snow eventually catches up and joins the group to the rear, but he might as well not even be there. For all that the l’Cie are dangerous creatures, Jihl has seen enough die to know they aren’t immortal. And _she_ sees the cracks in their formations, clear as day.

Snow man hasn’t said a word since returning and meanders through fights like he’s only barely there. The woman keeps herself on the edge of the group, pulling toward the center only when there are things to be slain or to speak to the girl, who shies away from her, and Sazh can’t stop glancing over his shoulder at her, suspicious and distracted. Lightning and the boy are solid, the duo that Jihl would fall to most easily, but he’s serving in the back and she’s at the fore.

Surprise is all she’d need to take them; divide, then conquer.

Jihl traces the fault lines with her eyes and returns to them over and over _just in case_. It soothes her pride, kicked and bloody from the boy’s accusation, and quiets her doubts. She can kill them if she needs, she tells herself. 

If there were sunlight, Jihl might be able to judge the time as it passes, but all she has is the ache in her back, her feet, her calves to measure the turn of the clock. By her estimate, three hours come and go before they break on the causeway bridging one tunnel to another across the ark’s great, bottomless shaft. They sit separated and take small bites of the packaged rations they’d found on the airship. Jihl doesn’t hunger so much as she hurts, so she takes out the commboard instead and tries to find a frequency that doesn’t spit static. She doesn’t dare sit.

“Excuse me,” comes a voice, and when Jihl looks, she sees the boy approaching, his hands open, easy.

She bristles at the sight of him, drawing herself up as much as possible. She pockets the commboard as though she’d never cared to look at it, and when she speaks, her voice is a honed edge, a blade meant for blood. “ _Yes_?”

“How is your back? I know we didn’t manage to heal it very well,” he says, giving her a somewhat shaky smile. “Barathandulus’s spell was… Really strong.”

Jihl sniffs and looks away. Healing is hardly the word for what they did to her. They brought her back, surely, but the ruin of skin and muscle that used to be her back is far from _healed_. She’d looked when she’d first awoken, eyes burning with tears, head swimming and hazy. She’d peeled away the clothes and taken a long look at herself in the cabin’s bathroom, and afterwards, she’d wretched until she had to stand, the curving of her spine too painful for her to stay huddled over the toilet.

“I didn’t expect it to be painless.” Dying was easy. It’s living she struggles with now.

“I could help,” he offers. “With the pain.”

Jihl presses her lips into a line, unsure of what to make of the boy. Over him, she can see the l’Cie watching them with scarcely veiled interest, and she wonders what it is he _wants_ from her. She has potions, surely, but those are finite, and besides, they only take the edge off. Real magic might do more for her. Human magic, _her magic_ , might not have that power, but they’d pulled her back from death—theirs is a whole different manner of magic.

“It would… Help our progression,” she finally manages, looking away. She hasn’t forgotten his words from earlier, but she holsters her baton anyway, her lips tight, her hands fists by her sides.

The boy brightens somewhat, gaining confidence. He steps a little closer and says, “Could you take off your coat? It helps—”

“No,” Jihl says, cutting him off. Her shoulders are a line of tension, her lips twisting into a snarl. He must have seen it before when they brought her back on the floor of the airship’s cockpit, but she won’t allow him a second look at her ruin of skin and muscle.

He goes silent at her tone, or maybe the way she closes in on herself, but behind him, the woman l’Cie is fingering her lance, her look all menace and mistrust. Sazh Katzroy watches her with narrowed eyes, and even the girl and Lightning don’t take their eyes off her. Jihl inhales sharply through her nose and looks away. “I’d rather not.”

He mumbles it might not do as much without skin to skin contact, but when she doesn’t say anymore, he slips behind her, pushes her hair out of the way, and sets his hands lightly on her shoulder blades. Pain lances through her, a bright light behind her eyes, and she starts to twist away, but then the magic begins to soak into her. It’s cool like water, washing over her in waves. She sighs, almost lightheaded, and sags, her pain forgotten.

“Better?” the boy asks.

“ _Yes_ ,” she heaves, surprised at the sound of her own voice. She can’t remember the last time she sounded so obliging, so relieved.

It’s as though she hasn’t just walked, her back ramrod straight, her paces short and careful, her shoulders aching even through the dulling effects of the potion. It’s as though she’s not graceless and stiff, mutilated by magic and led around by the very monsters she’s devoted her life to rooting out. It’s not as though her whole life has been spent serving Cocoon’s enemy, serving Barthadalus.

She closes her eyes and nearly forgets it all to the soft hum of magic and the gentle sensation of it across her skin.

“You’re the PSICOM commander, right?” the boy asks, jarring her.

“Yes,” she says, opening her eyes, everything hazy around the edges. She blinks, but nothing comes into focus, so she just closes her eyes again, her head swimming.

“My name is Hope Estheim,” he explains. “My father is Bartholomew Estheim—from Palumpolum. You visited last year when Carbuncle made that school teacher a l’Cie.”

 “Estheim?” she asks, frowning. “Oh, I hadn’t realized. You don’t look like him.”

It strikes her as odd that she wouldn’t notice. Jihl makes her career noticing the things other miss. She would have held the father if only she’d known.

She sways on the spot, and the boy asks, “Are you okay?”

“I should have seen it,” she says aloud, ignoring his question. “I saw you then… In the gardens with your mother. Moira?”

“Nora,” he corrects.

“Of course.” She smiles. “Who would have thought you’d grow up to become a l’Cie? Perhaps if I’d just…”

“Everyone says I look like my mom more than my dad, but… My father was taken in Palumpolum to be Purged. Do you know what happened to him?” he asks, his hands pulsing with magic still. “PSICOM took him, and you command PSICOM, right? You have to know.”

Jihl nearly laughs, leaning back into the boy’s hands. “I know? Don’t _you_?”

She’s met by only silence, but it doesn’t stop the words tumbling from her lips. “You saw the Purge, didn’t you? There are reports. We know you were there too. Lake Bresha—what an _embarrassment._

“This one will go smoother. None of the green boys from before, Yaag made sure of that. There will be turrets at every gate, and the men have orders to do what they must to get those people Pulse-side. We were too soft on you. This time, we’ll be tracking the progress of the Purge through Baaj and Luca, and if there’s so much as a hiccup, there are missiles… Quarantine wasn’t good enough last time. We can’t risk—”

He pulls his hands away, and the floor rushes up too meet Jihl before she can even realize she’s falling. Around her, the surroundings fill in: a great chasm, rusting metal, and the distance calls of beasts. She’s landed on her back, blinking away stars, but nothing registers.  The boy’s magic still thrums through her, slowing her down.

“Hope!”

Over her, the boy stands open mouthed and wide eyed, holding his hands close to his chest like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He looks down on her like she’s a body once more.

She ought to tell him not to look so upset. She’s done this before. What’s another death?

“Hope, what happened?”

“She… I don’t know, I just…” the boy stutters, his eyes glassy and unsure. “Lightning, she said my dad…”

“What’s _wrong_ with her?”

“Fang, _don’t._ Hope? Can you help me?”

Their voices blend, the words like water running between her fingers. Everything pulses around her, becoming colors and vague shapes. She murmurs for them to stop, her throat dry, her voice soft. The world begins to move, and all of it is fearfully familiar to her. Last time she’d woken in the cabin of an airship, sick in every sense of the word. Where will she wake this time, she wonders? And where are her lieutenants? Her corporals? Her _soldiers?_ How could they let this happen to her?

 _Too many potions_ , she thinks before she remembers she’s only had one. Her head throbs, and she closes her eyes, sinking into a feverish slumber.

She sees Barthandelus again, but this time he faces her down, snarling and laughing as she tries to engage him with her mana drives. Yaag is at her side, but even with him, Barthandelus bats the magic away without lifting even one of those long, hooked claws, and when he’s done, he breathes fire down upon her. She screams as her skin melts like wax, her bones char like wood, and her eyes run down her face like tears, and no matter how she shrieks for Yaag to help her, he does not hear. He steps over her to face down Barthandelus, his coat tails snapping behind him.

“She never shuts up, does she?”

The sound is jarring. It doesn’t belong on the _Palamecia_ , doesn’t belong on Cocoon at all. Her lips part and the fire recedes. She is alive, she remembers, opening her eyes.

“Guilty conscious,” Sazh Katzroy responds.

“Mr. Katzroy,” she mouths, her head heavy, every bit of her aching. She breathes in deep and tastes bile. It’s waking up on the airship all over again, but this time when her vision comes into focus, there’s no chrome, no white walls. She’s surrounded by gloom, the darkness kept at bay only by the dim lights humming softly overhead.

“Oh, the viper’s waking,” the woman l’Cie says, remarkably venomous considering Jihl is supposed to be the viper. She crosses her arms and observes Jihl, lying on her side on the filthy tile. The woman spits, turning to the steps down from the platform they’ve perched on. Over her shoulder, she says, “Sure Lightning will be pleased as can be.”

She takes the steps quickly, but neither Jihl nor Sazh move until she’s gone. Then Sazh looks at Jihl, his eyes made of stone. “You can stand?”

“Yes,” Jihl says even though standing seems impossible from where she lies. Her throat is dry and her head thrums painfully. She does her best to push herself up, but when she rises, her stomach twists and churns, and she turns her head and retches.

Across from her, Sazh grimaces and wipes his hands on his trousers. He stands and looks down on her, her liquid diet of potions running across the floor. She nearly expects him to offer a hand, but he looks away, saying, “You’ll want to be hurrying along then. Lightning, Hope, and Vanille will be back soon, and no one’s keen on waiting around here much longer.”

Jihl spits and grits her teeth. She feels her stomach clench again, but somehow she keeps herself from retching again, and she pushes herself away, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

“What did he do to me?” she asks, making her voice unyielding as steel. “The Estheim boy. He—”

“No worse than you did to _him_ ,” Sazh interrupts, his tone matching hers. “He’s just a kid, and he was trying to help you, damn it. You don’t get to take a father from his son, not when he’s already lost his mother.”

When he’d seen her on the _Palamecia_ after Nautilus, he’d shouted that he’d been looking for her and brandished his pistols like he meant to kill. Now he speaks very quietly, and his hands are empty, fisted at his sides, but she swallows and goes quiet all the same. Mr. Katzroy, she realizes, is no less dangerous than the rest of them, no matter how she’s played him in the past. 

“Hah. Guess it never bothered you before, though,” he says, looking at her over his shoulder. “Get up and stay away from the kids, Nabaat. They don’t deserve it.”

Then he goes too, leaving her to struggle to her feet. It’s harder than before, and she keeps her balance only with the help of the wall, but rising is near excruciating, and she has to set her jaw to keep from moaning when she finally gets to her feet.

She reaches for another potion for her returning pains and surveys the room as she drinks it down.

They’ve taken shelter in a room of platforms and grinding machinery, the corpses of pulsework knights and circuitrons left where they fell. The roof rises high above them, the area is sprawling, and the three l’Cie have made use of the space, putting as much of it between them as they can. Snow has taken a spot twenty meters off, clutching something desperately to his chest. He won’t look up, and the woman and Sazh don’t even try to make him. Sazh stalks off between the platforms, his fists balled, the little chocobo chick fluttering around his head, but the woman l’Cie doesn’t stray. She stands at the galley beneath Jihl’s vantage point, her sandal kicked up on the smashed hull of a pulsework knight. Her sneer is a threat, her spear a bared blade. She invites hazard.

Jihl might have smiled at the challenge once, but now she turns away, her stomach roiling, her hands shaking. Death might not have plagued her half so much as the l’Cie’s magic, though she can’t figure out _why_.

Weakly, Jihl touches the pack of rations at her belt, but she isn’t sure she could keep anything down right now, so she doesn’t waste what little she has. Instead, she pulls out the commboard from the ship and dials through the frequencies, searching for something, someone. All she gets is static, but she still holds down the receiver and says, “This is Commander Nabaat, head of PSICOM, radioing for immediate rescue. Coordinates unknown, injured but still ambulatory, threat level white—I repeat, threat level white. In need of…”

Jihl pauses, lets the commboard crackle, and then presses the receiver down again.

“This is Commander Nabaat, head of PSICOM, solider number 1147395-X3, calling for the immediate removal of the traitor, Galenth Dysley. The Primarch has aided Cocoon’s enemies, attacked our own forces, and plots for the destruction of our world. Get this information to Yaag Rosch, second-in-command of the PSICOM forces, and allow him command until I… If I return. I repeat, Galenth Dysley is the _enemy._ ”

Jihl repeats this over and over. “Galenth Dysley is the enemy. Galenth Dysley is the enemy. Get this information to Commander Yaag Rosch immediately. The Primarch has betrayed us,” she say into the receiver, getting nothing but interference for all her wasted breath.

If they are truly on Cocoon still, they’re so far from civilization they might never be found. This Ark will serve as their tombs. Looking out over the l’Cie, Jihl wonders if maybe that is the best they can hope for.

Finally, she says, “I will do what I can to protect Cocoon.” Then she slides the commboard back into her coat pocket and totters toward the stairs, taking them carefully.

The woman still waits for her at the bottom, all snarls and raised hackles, but Jihl passes her by without so much as a look. She’s learned to overlook underlings, and this woman is nothing more than a piece of scenery to Jihl.

“Hey,” the woman growls as she passes. “Where do you think you’re going, lady?”

She twists around the fallen pulsework knight with a flourish of her lance, and Jihl is too slow and too graceless to step around her. She grounds her teeth. It wasn’t as if she didn’t see this coming—the woman is an open book, all rage and desperation—but she can’t avoid her like this. Wistfully, she wishes she weren’t so rigid.

“Have no fear, l’Cie. I’ll return with the rest of your motley assortment shortly.” Jihl smiles at her and tries to pass her, her arms heavy at her sides.

“With Vanille?” Her brow creases, and she steps to block Jihl. “I don’t think so.”

“Then perhaps I should return without her,” Jihl says, kindly as can be. When she juts her shoulder to try to slide around her again, the woman catches her by the wrist and holds her tight.

“Try me,” she hisses. “I haven’t forgot what you did to Vanille.”

 _So you’ve said_ , Jihl thinks, trying to pull her hand away only to find the woman has cords of steel beneath that dark skin. “I need to discuss our strategy with Lightning. This isn’t getting us anywhere, wouldn’t you agree?”

The woman’s fingers are manacles on Jihl’s wrist, sure to bruise, but ever so slowly, she eases off. The jade of her eyes is cloudy, the dark purple under her eyes a shadow of her sleepless nights. They’re all falling apart, Jihl realizes. Or maybe they were never whole to begin with.

“You have a better plan?” Her lips curl in contempt.

Jihl finally slides around her, brushing her hair over her shoulder as she goes, and says, “To discuss with Lightning.”

For a moment, the woman is silent, but then her sandals clack along the metal tiles right next to Jihl’s. Her jaw is set, but her lance is shouldered. Jihl doesn’t acknowledge her, but the woman walks faster than she does, and it’s impossible to ignore when she looks up and hollers, “Hey Hero, Sazh! Taking the viper for a walk.”

Sazh gives her a long look. He touches his pistols like he’s thinking about joining them, but in the end he nods and waves, and let’s them carry on without coming down from his platform. Snow doesn’t even give them that much. As they pass him, Jihl squints and sees the brand on his arm, angry snarls of black and red twisting from elbow to wrist. She’s worked with enough l’Cie to know his time is short. She just hopes she can talk to Lightning before it’s too late.

The path is a winding on once they’re out of the room just like every other tunnel system in the Ark. They trek past broken side passages, vaults of cryogens that were sliced in half before they were able to explode, and narrow walkways along the edges of great pits, and it is all Jihl can do to keep up. They follow the bodies of the dead, keeping to the path laid out by Lightning’s group, their weapons tucked away in their holsters.

They pass through an antechamber with gray green walls, but before they can climb the steps to the next passageway, a vault opens with a hiss and click of metal. Imps totter from their prisons, frost still clinging to them from their cryogenic slumber, and it’s all Jihl can do to scramble out of the way of a hasty aero spell, back-stepping until she’s nearly against the wall, the gusts whipping at her as the spell swirls within the small room.

The l’Cie gives a snap of her teeth and whips out her lance, spearing the first of the small, teetering spell-casters and tossing it aside. Two single in on her while the third turns its one bulging eye on Jihl. She snaps her fingers just as the creature hurls an ice spell at her, and it shatters against her shell, fracturing the protective shield. Jihl draws her baton and lurches forward, all instinct, but her movements are dull, graceless, and she can’t close in on the beast before it’s lobbing a fireball at her. This time her shell shatters, the impact vibrating through her skull and teeth, and it’s all she can do to twist away from the imp’s blizzard. She falls more than dodges, gasping as she hits the ground and setting her jaw against the white hot flash of pain. The taste of copper blossoms on her tongue.

On her hands and knees, her baton pressed into the tile, she looks past the curtain of blonde hair and sees the imp grin, feral and victorious. It exhales a rattling cry, almost a laugh, and for half a second, she hears only Barthandelus. Then the end of a spear juts through the thing, and all the noise dies out as the imp dies on the blades of the woman l’Cie’s lance.

“Rats,” she says, sneering down at the bloody mess. Behind her, the others lie dead or dying, tiny wings fluttering weakly. “Probably waiting for Vanille and them to come back around.”

Jihl doesn’t move. She’s frozen by fear and pain both, but the woman looks over at her all the same and gives her the same look she gave the imp.  She rips the end of her spear from the creature’s body and gives it a twirl, blood flicking off the spear points onto the ceiling and floor and Jihl herself. She flinches away from the spatter of violet blood against her cheek.

“If you can’t kill anything, stay out of my way, viper,” the woman says, slipping her lance over her shoulder again.

Jihl takes short, deep breaths, wiping the blood from her face. It stains her fine leather gloves, the ones her father had given her upon becoming PSICOM’s commander. It takes a moment to rise, righting herself slowly, her elbows and knees throbbing from where she’d fallen. She’s getting used to rising without help now, and though it gets no easier, she manages better. She’s bitten her lip as well, she realizes. It’s beginning to swell, and the blood mingles with the sweet taste of potions.

“If you prefer,” Jihl says coolly, licking her lips and not meeting the l’Cie’s gaze.

The woman eyes Jihl up and down and then turns, leading the way once more. She follows mindlessly, her hands shaking, her pulse in her throat. Her marks in combat tactics had been second only to Yaag’s when they’d become officers, and in her last field exercise, she’d disarmed every trainee and seasoned soldier that had come against her. Even Yaag had lost his rapier when she’d cracked her baton against his knuckles and broken two of his fingers, but all she can think now is how easily Barthandelus had  executed her with barely a flick of his wrist.

Jihl’s skin glistens with sweat by the time Lightning, Vanille, and Hope appear at the other end of a causeway, their formation tight, the space between them nearly nonexistent. The girl is looking so sympathetically at Hope, but he’s got his head up, his eyes forward. Seeing him, the back of her neck crawls, but she keeps her gaze steady, unflinching.

“Fang!” the girl exclaims when she notices them.

The woman, Fang, gives the weariest smile Jihl’s ever seen and waves, quickening her pace to meet them sooner. She meets Vanille between them, slinging a heavy arm around her frail shoulders, and passing a smile over both Lightning and Hope as well.

Vanille watches Jihl over her shoulder, her verdant eyes sharp and attentive. She takes in everything: the moisture on Jihl’s brow, the faint smudge of blood on her face, the painful way she carries herself. Jihl can see herself reflected in those eyes, and she remembers Vanille is a liar as well. Jihl might have worn glasses to make herself warmer, more approachable, but the girl doesn’t even need that. She incites pity and compassion with a look, loyalty with a smile. She could be the end of Jihl—especially _now_.

Fang turns with Vanille under her arm to face Jihl, her features going hard again like she’d forgotten she’d been there for just a moment. “She wants to talk to you, Light. She’s got some plan, she says,” she explains, her doubts plain to hear.

“A plan?” Hope echoes.

Jihl hesitates, looking at Lightning. Her mana drives hum against the back of her hands, but she knows they won’t help her here.

“I would rather discuss it with you alone, Sergeant,” Jihl says, addressing Lightning almost singularly. She passes glances over the rest of them as well. She’s a soldier, after all. She’ll understand.

“To hell with that,” the woman called Fang says, pulling Vanille closer to her. “Let’s hear it, viper.”

Lightning doesn’t move. “If it’s a plan, we all need to hear it,” she says.

Jihl, to her credit, doesn’t so much as look her way. She keeps her eyes trained on Lightning, wishing for all the world she might just drink another potion. She’s hot, her neck and chest and face, and every bit of her hurts. She wants to lie down and never rise.

“Very well,” she bites.

 _They aren’t people_ , she remembers telling Yaag before they split to hunt l’Cie. Her eyes flicker between Hope and Lightning. _They’re targets._

“My attempts to use the commboard from the airship to contact PSICOM have all ended in failure. Wherever we are on Cocoon, they can’t find us, nor we them. I propose this is the way it ought to be. Your large friend—Snow—his brand is advancing rapidly. I’ve seen it before, the irritation around the brand; I believe it’s even started to raise. He’ll be a Cie’th before long, and the rest of you with him. Ordinarily you’d be threats to Cocoon even as cie’th, but here—”

“ _Here_ we’ll die,” Fang finishes for her, her lips pulled back. “Nice and quiet just like the vipers want us to.”

“I weigh the lives of seven insignificant against the lives of millions. The Pulse Vestige is gone. This ends with you,” Jihl responds, cool.

Fang steps forward, leaving Vanille behind, and takes a fistful of Jihl’s collar and draws her close. From here, she’s nothing more than a shadow of a person, and Jihl can’t help the way her eyes flicker down to the woman’s brand. _Better to die quietly than take all of Cocoon with you,_ she thinks, pressing her lips into a line and feebly grabbing the woman’s wrist.

“We should have left you with Dysley,” Fang hisses.

“Fang,” the girl calls, her voice hesitant.

“I should have killed Mr. Katzroy and that girl when I had the chance,” Jihl returns. “Would five deaths be easier to swallow?”

Fang snarls right in her face, but Jihl’s mana drives whir against her hands, and Fang pulls her hand away, cursing and swiping at the pale, frozen skin. Jihl nearly stumbles, catching herself, but she keeps her feet and draws her baton when she sees Fang reaching for her lance. She blinks and sees her ripping the end of it from the imp, and for half a second, it’s her instead of the spell-caster.

Lightning’s gunblade comes slicing between them, the edge deadly sharp. “No one’s going to die,” she snaps.

“Fang,” Vanille calls from behind them. “Don’t… She—she might be right…”

Jihl nearly laughs out loud, her pulse thrumming in her ears. “She’s right, you know.”

“Shut up!” Fang takes a step forward, but Lightning pushes in front of her. She can’t see Lightning’s expression, but something in it makes Fang grimace with fury. “She’s talking about us dying here! _Why are you defending her_?”

“Because she’s still thinking about Cocoon,” Lightning says.

Fang bares her teeth and turns away, her spear tight in her hands. Vanille nearly shies away from her. “Cocoon can rot, same as Pulse!” she bites, looking at Vanille. “She’s not right. She _isn’t_.”

Vanille won’t look at her and tugs at the hem of her skirt, gnawing her lower lip. Fang stalks towards her, touching her cheek, but the girl turns away, saying, “We caused all of this. Maybe we should…”

“It doesn’t end with us,” Lightning says, relaxing her stance now that Fang has gone.

“Barthandelus,” Hope says, and Jihl had nearly forgotten he was there. “And Serah and my dad. We can’t… We can’t stop here.”

“Right,” Lightning says, looking over her shoulder at him and then back to Jihl. “We can’t forget Bathandelus is still up there.”

Jihl sharpens, refusing to sheath her baton until Fang has shouldered her lance, and regards Lightning from the corner of her eye. “I haven’t forgotten about Barthandelus,” she snaps, her back throbbing. “But if I can save Cocoon by keeping you here, then he doesn’t matter.”

Even as she says the words, she can’t stop seeing him: feral, jagged grin and mocking laughter. She’ll see him burning her for the rest of her days, but she has a _duty_ to Cocoon. Duty made her embrace death when she stood between Galenth Dysley and six murderous l’Cie, and duty makes her return willingly to its clutches to stop Barthandelus from killing millions.

“He’ll try again,” Hope says.

“He won’t have you,” she tells him.

When no one replies, Jihl looks to Lightning. “Sergeant, are you willing to risk Cocoon for this?”

For the first time, Jihl sees Lightning’s face go stricken. The corners of her mouth dip and her grip on her gunblade goes loose. The lines of exhaustion become more pronounced across her face, and she closes in on herself.

“She’s right,” the girl says, her eyes glassy.

Fang is taut and tense, looking to no one. Hope clasps at his own hands, waiting for Lightning to tell Jihl she’s wrong. The cracks have become fissures.

Static splits the silence, spitting and crackling from within Jihl’s pocket. She nearly jumps at the sound, mistaking it for the cry of a creature of the Ark before she can properly identify it. She touches her pocket as the device within screeches.

“Comm— _srrk…_ ease respond… repea… aines _srrk_ —aat.”

Jihl pulls the commboard out in one hurried movement, her fingers fumbling and shaking trying to dial in the frequency. It hisses at her, but after a few moments of interference, the message comes in again, louder and clearer:

“Commander Nabaat, please respond. This is Brigadier General Cid Raines. I repeat, this is Cid Raines, answering the distress call from Commander Jihl Nabaat.”

She raises the device to her lips and replies, “This is Commander Jihl Nabaat. I read you, Brigadier General.”

Everyone’s eyes are on her now, and she can feel herself trembling. They can get the message out now. Cocoon will know Barthandelus’s plans, and even if the seven of them die in this forsaken place, Barthandelus won’t succeed.

“Commander, your signal is weak. Are you within the Ark?”

“I am. What is your position, Raines? Are you still on Cocoon?”

A moment of silence passes before Cid Raines responds. “Are the l’Cie with you?”

“Yes, but that’s irrelevant now. Raines, you must get in touch with Yaag. Let him know the Primarch is—”

“Commander? Your signal isn’t holding. Do you still copy?” he asks. “I’m stationed on the 47th landing zone with an aircraft prepared to take you back to Cocoon. I’ll await your arrival.”

Then the commboard returns to static, hissing. Jihl stares at the device for a long time, her swollen lips parted, before Fang’s voice breaks her from her stunned silence.

“You sent out a distress call?” she asks.

“Yes… He must have come across it and moved into range,” Jihl says, her thoughts racing.

They could use his communication equipment to get word to Yaag. She might… She could return once the l’Cie had turned. There would be a space left for her at the front of the charge against Barthandelus.

“We have to go to him,” she declares. “He’ll be able to patch us through to PSICOM.”

“He asked about us,” Hope says, worrying his lip between his teeth.

“Now you’re running off to get rescued? To hell with that. We ought to take that ship ourselves,” Fang says, fingering her lance.

“Fang, we _can’t_ ,” Vanille protests.

Jihl looks to Lightning. She’s still holding her gunblade, but her grip has gone solid again. She looks at the commboard, her world narrowed to the small pane of metal clutched in Jihl’s hands. She’s only ever seen her so intent once before: when Jihl met them on the floor of the _Palamecia_ , ready to take them all on. Lightning had only had eyes for Dysley then.

“Will you escort me, Sergeant? They have to be warned,” Jihl says.

Lightning looks up at her, her face shadowed by doubt. She swallows and then glances around her at the other l’Cie. Finally, she says:

“We need to get Snow and Sazh.”


End file.
